The Kraken

A paper presented to the Geological Society of America suggests an explanation for a puzzling accumulation of skeletal remains of prehistoric ichthyosaurs. The paper's authors speculate that the ichthyosaurs were killed and eaten by a gigantic cephalopod, a 'kraken' more than twice the size of the modern Colossal Squid, that might have lived during the Triassic period.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. My learned colleagues, Dr McMenamin among them, continue to deny the implications of their discoveries. Even in the face of the incontrovertible evidence that they themselves have found, they still babble weakly of 'ancient primitive cephalopods' and 'middens', as their frail minds refuse to acknowledge the truth and take refuge instead in these puerile protective fictions. Ancient, yes, ancient indeed was the creature that placed those bones, arranging them in patterns eerily reminiscent of certain geoglyphs reported by the survivors of the Arkham University Antarctic Expedition, immemorial carvings that are said to have driven more than one observer instantly insane with their blasphemous wrongness. Nor is Dr McMenamin incorrect when he describes the maker of these patterns as 'the most intelligent invertebrate ever', but it would blast his mind with horror to know the full scope of that ravening, inhuman intellect. The Kanakas of the Pacific and certain degenerate islanders from the coast of Newfoundland might set Dr McMenamin straight on that score, but he would hardly think to consult them on the subject.

But I must not be too harsh in my judgments of these well-intentioned scholars. I remind myself that they have not had access to certain sources of information. The name of the horrifying Cthulhu Cult means nothing to them. They have not spoken, as I have, with a detective of Yoknapatawpha County of Mississippi, who saw things in the swamps there that left him weak in mind and body, aged before his time. And neither have they looked into the terrible book known as the Necronomicon, written by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. If they had, certain things would become hideously clear to them, as they are to me.